A Game of Thrones, Catelyn IV
High overhead, the far-eyes sang out from the rigging. Captain Moreo came scrambling across the deck, giving orders, and all around them the Storm Dancer burst into frenetic activity as King’s Landing slid into view atop its three high hills.
Three hundred years ago, Catelyn knew, those heights had been covered with forest, and only a handful of fisherfolk had lived on the north shore of the Blackwater Rush where that deep, swift river flowed into the sea.
Then Aegon the Conqueror had sailed from Dragonstone.
It was here that his army had put ashore, and there on the highest hill that he built his first crude redoubt of wood and earth.
Now the city covered the shore as far as Catelyn could see; manses and arbors and granaries, brick storehouses and timbered inns and merchant’s stalls, taverns and graveyards and brothels, all piled one on another. She could hear the clamor of the fish market even at this distance.
Between the buildings were broad roads lined with trees, wandering crookback streets, and alleys so narrow that two men could not walk abreast.
